NewsFlash, May 2011

Makers of e-readers like the Amazon Kindle DX have some work to do before the devices replace textbooks at universities, according to findings from a long-term study conducted at seven U.S. colleges. The study was led by human centered design and engineering's Charlotte Lee and PhD student Alex Thayer.

Digital devices could ostensibly replace the expensive textbooks that many students shell out for every semester. Eventually. For now, e-readers are still supplemental devices because many of them don't work well and, more importantly, they don't work well with the human brain.

Just seven months after adopting the Kindle DX for university-level reading and note-taking, some 60 percent of students had put it aside in favor of traditional learning material. Human centered design and engineering PhD student Alex Thayer and adviser Charlotte Lee presented their findings in Vancouver at a conference on human-computer interaction.

UW researcher Charlotte Lee and PhD student Alex Thayer, in Human Centered Design and Engineering, are about to present a report on a pilot project that had computer science students use a Kindle DX for their course reading.

Frozen smoke made of diamonds -- the lightest form of diamond known -- could find use within electronics and sensors. Known as aerogels, these are the world's lightest solids, made up of as much as 99.8 percent air. Materials scientist Peter Pauzauskie synthesized the material as a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

In 2006, Washington voters gave utilities a clear mandate to develop renewable sources of energy. In their efforts to generate more green power, however, some utilities and industries are running into unexpected opposition: environmentalists. UW research into tidal energy is mentioned.

Redmond-based Central Electric Cooperative is funding a project to test a wave-power buoy slated to be installed off the coast of Oregon by late summer or early fall. Oregon State University and the UW researchers at the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center are investigating how well wave-power technology will work, as well as the environmental and social issues that come with it.

Civil and environmental engineer Jim Thomson and his team are trying to understand what the environmental impacts might be of placing two 45 foot high turbines about 150 feet below the surface of Puget Sound.

Scientists are casting doubt on a study that claimed bacteria ate nearly all the methane that leaked after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, saying its methods were flawed. Chemical engineer Ludmila Chistoserdova is a co-author on the new paper published in Science.

Lamborghini boss Stephan Winkelmann says the Aventador is two generations ahead of the Murciélago it replaces. At its core is the breakthrough, an affordable one-piece carbon-fibre chassis that is the end result of years of work with Boeing and the University of Washington.

ScienceCareers profiles Bryan Reimer, an MIT researcher whose work focuses on improving the performance of the human who drives the car. Industrial and systems engineer Linda Ng Boyle, a collaborator of Reimer's, is quoted.

Tolls on the 520 floating bridge may be just the beginning of road tolls in the Seattle region. Civil engineer Mark Hallenbeck, who directs the Washington State Transportation Center at the UW, is a guest on the program.

The age of the connected car is dawning. For anyone who follows network computing or computing in general, adding these new features to a moving vehicle should raise a red flag as yet another way hackers can cause problems.

A New Scientist editorial, "Privacy in the Age of Facebook," considers recent privacy breaches by Apple, Amazon and Sony. An accompanying article notes that computer scientist David Wetherall is developing tools to monitor the data transmission of apps and provide easy-to-understand "privacy revelations" about each one.

What if you could control every appliance in your home with one hand? With this technology developed by computer scientist and electrical engineer Shwetak Patel and collaborators at Microsoft Research, you just might be able to.

Engineers at UW and Microsoft Research have found a way to harness ambient electromagnetic radiation for a computer interface that turns any wall in a building into a touch-sensitive surface. Computer scientist and electrical engineer Shwetak Patel is quoted.

Electrical engineering PhD student Gabe Cohn and collaborators at UW and Microsoft Research developed technology that can detect electromagnetic fields produced by a human body, as well as those produced by electrical appliances and power cables. The sensor, which can be worn on the neck or wrist, is connected to a computer that can record and recognize field changes keyed into particular poses.

iPads, 3-D TVs, and other slick modern displays would be a lot better if they weren't hemmed in by frames and limited by solidity. Electrical engineer and nanobiotechnologist Babak Parviz are developing a much cooler approach: display screens built into contact lenses.

Increasing the ranks of women faculty members in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines has become an area of intense focus for academe. The organizers of the On-Ramps into Academia workshop in Seattle have taken a different approach: encouraging and coaching talented and accomplished women to leave their positions in private industry and return to campus. Dean Matt O'Donnell, electrical engineer Eve Riskin, OnRamps program manager Joyce Yen and human centered design and engineering's Cecilia Aragon are quoted.

It’s no secret that there’s extraordinary competition right now for computer scientists, writes computer scientist Ed Lazowska. Both nationally and regionally, new UW graduates are receiving extraordinary offers.

On college campuses, the outlook for new grads is better than it's been for the past couple of years. Still, for many students landing a good job remains tough. Industrial and systems engineering senior Brittany Kohler and electrical engineering senior Nick Douglas are interviewed as examples from the former category.

DEviaNT is a new computer program developed at the UW that can determine, with 72 percent accuracy, when it is appropriate to respond to a sentence with the double entendre "That's what she said," popularized by Steve Carell's character on "The Office."

Double entendres have been making us laugh since the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare, but up until now computers weren't in on the joke. Chloé Kiddon and Yuriy Brun, two computer scientists at the University of Washington, have developed a system for recognising a particular type of double entendre.

We may need to ditch that aphorism about throwing stones at glass houses. Mechanical engineering grad students Renuka Prabhakar and Grant Marchelli have found a way to make bricks out of recycled glass that they say are stronger, lighter and better insulators than conventional building blocks.

During the University of Washington's Undergraduate Symposium Friday, nearly a thousand UW undergraduate students shared the kind of cutting-edge research and novel thinking they've done during their college years. Bioengineering seniors Pranoti Hiremath and Christopher Mount are mentioned.

Hundreds of students attended a panel discussion entitled, “Can You Save the World?” The talk was sponsored by a new student-run organization, the Critical Development Forum, started by civil and environmental engineering senior Dean Chahim. Chahim and Susan Bolton, a faculty adviser for UW's Engineers Without Borders chapter, are quoted.

The Daily profiles a number of UW students who are embarking on "nontraditional study abroad experiences” outside academic institutions. Laura Schlenke, a master’s student in Human Centered Design and Engineering, is traveling to Uganda this coming summer to help train midwives in how to use an ultrasound to detect for complications in pregnant women.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded 88 proposals from around the world $100,000 each to further research into health and development issues. Seattle nonprofit Village Reach and UW computer scientist Gaetano Borriello won a first-round grant to for their proposal, “Digitizing Paper-Based Data Via Mobile Image Technologies.”

PotaVida is developing a $10 device that helps people in developing worlds or disaster-stricken areas determine if their drinking water is safe. Charlie Matlack, who is earning his PhD in electrical engineering, said the team will put the more than $25,000 in prize money to good use.

After 17 grueling hours, computer science PhD student Alexei Czeskis and his “cyber swat team” buddies from the University of Washington emerged victorious, slamming their digital doors on the red team’s top guns.